


The Machinery of Night

by shealynn88



Category: The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 14:21:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2815184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shealynn88/pseuds/shealynn88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hazel and Issac lean on each other.  Hazel waxes philosophical.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Machinery of Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pie_is_good](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pie_is_good/gifts).



I hoped that the preview I got of life after child was not my parents' future. Augustus's mother sewed. A lot. I went over twice before I was able to find appropriate ways to refuse, and each time she was sewing as if her life depended on it. 

Maybe it did.

She gave me the pillow the last time I stopped by, and my face must have done some strange things before I settled on something sort of sad and thankful. 

She gave me a big hug. “I wanted you to have that,” she said. “To remember him. To know that there will be better things, Hazel.”

“Thanks,” I managed, extracting myself as quickly as I could.

_Without pain, we couldn't know joy._  


I wanted nothing more than to throw it out, but I couldn't. I didn't want to cause any more pain. As it turned out, the back of the pillow was simple and maroon, and coordinated with my drapes. It was the best option.

I wondered if they really believed it was true. Did they find it comfortable to think that now, they would know the most ecstatic joy, having experienced the pain of losing their son? Was it as much a front for them as it was for me? Did it ring as patently, painfully false? Because I would need some pretty amazing joy to make up for the pain that was crushing me now.

Then I thought of our time in Amsterdam. At the bridge. In the hotel room. And I cried softly, wondering what type of equation I would need to compare that degree of pure, wild joy against the yawning cavity of pain I was feeling now.

Issac called. I avoided discussion of the persistent ache. That was mine. He'd have one, too, I knew. But it would be different, and I wasn't in a sharing mood. Instead, I told him about the pillow.

“If she could sew in braille, I'd probably have one, too,” Issac said.

I laughed in spite of myself, and we talked about inconsequential things, Augustus hanging over us like a ghost. The haunter.

“Okay?” Issac finally asked, quietly, as if he really wanted to know.

“Okay.” I responded.

I hung up before he could say it again. He'd have no idea why it hurt, and it wasn't something I could explain. It would be like giving away one of the last pieces I had.

***

Some days it felt like dying might be easier than fighting for every breath – both literally and often, now, figuratively. But I owed it to the universe to be alive. To be infinitely small, and alive. If Augustus lived on in anyone's memory, it wasn't those boys he'd played basketball with. That memory was old and bright eyed, and a long cancer ago. If Augustus had lived, and I'd died, he'd have the memories I'd want remembered.

So I remembered. Sometimes alone, and sometimes with Issac.

A lot of times, we'd sit together and play video games. In the dark. I'd close my eyes, and he'd provide the commentary and we'd kill things sightlessly, and it felt like we existed less there. That the pain existed less, there. Like another world, where death was dealt to those who deserved it. Or those too slow to avoid it. But never slowly and painfully, seeping through bones and lungs and eyes, the way we knew so personally. It was a cleaner, more heroic way to go. There was the possibility of winning the battle. If you were just clever enough, fast enough, skilled enough, you could win. I think that's why we liked Max Mayhem so much. It seemed so easy, to have enemies you could define, and kill. When the enemy wasn't just another piece of you gone rogue. And where the hero, dead or alive at the end of it, had somehow become better for it, made the world better and safer. I guess that's what Augustus was fighting for, that kind of recognition.

“What is bravery?” I asked, not really looking for an answer.

He shrugged, fingers still moving on the controller. “Not running away, I guess.” As if we could run.

“I hate when they call us brave.”

“I'd rather be a coward with eyes.”

“Ha. Just like the rest of us cowardly eye-having folk.” I hesitated. Then, “I don't want to be brave anymore.”

He scoffed. “You're not brave, you're just slow and your lungs are crap.”

I laughed. “If only they knew how easy our brand of bravery was to come by. Just a tumor away! Everyone would want one.”

He reached for my hand, and I let him find it.

***

“Angela?” Patrick asked the new girl. She was frail and walked with a cane, and I had diagnosed her with osteosarc before she made it three steps into the room. Oh, cancer games. They're like bingo, but the big win is death. Or maybe the big win is the loss of vital body parts to get the privilege of living. Eyes. Balls. Legs. All you have to do is give up those things you thought all this time you needed.

I played that game, sometimes – what would I give up to live. Ovaries were high on the list. I wouldn't ever need them. My lungs were dying far faster than my libido was growing. Eyes – a little lower. But a leg, that seemed like a reasonable trade. Though not a guarantee, as it turned out. But I'd trade a leg, and maybe an arm. Ideally I'd like to keep one of each. But none of it mattered. They don't give out new lungs to girls full of cancer, so the game got tired pretty fast.

While I was musing in that ridiculous self-pitying way that disgusted even me, the girl was talking. “This is pointless,” she said quietly. “We don't matter. None of us. We tear a hole in the world, and then we die. We are a set of stories people tell to comfort themselves at night – at least you're not that girl with cancer. We're boogeymen. Or charity opportunities. But we're not _real_ to anyone who isn't living it.” She gestured broadly, to the church and us, and potentially the entire city. “It's pointless,” she repeated, slumping back.

As we left, I asked Issac, “Do you think that's true? What she said?”

He shrugged, not bothering to ask who I was talking about. “I think it sounds like something you might have said. Before Gus.”

I nodded, forgetting again that he couldn't see me. “You're probably right,” I amended. “But that wasn't my question.”

He was quiet as we took the stairs, very slowly, to where our parents waited. “I think she'll see more of the world than I will, and that's not pointless.” He paused. “I think you know as well as I do it isn't true. It feels that way, sometimes. That we're reduced to being burdens. But I know it's not true. Because the people we've lost were still people. And sure, they're lessons in some books. But to us...they're real, and important, and we wouldn't be the same without them.”

“Without him,” I said, and we walked in silence until his mother took his arm and we parted ways.

***

It stayed with me, what he'd said. _She'll see more of the world than I will..._

The thing about dying – sometimes you forget that dying isn't the same as dead – it's actually quite a bit like living. Just, shorter term, and in my case, shorter breath.

I took him to the park. To the statue. “Have you ever been here?” I asked him.

He shook his head, no.

Neither he or Augustus would ever see the things I saw, now. Issac was nearly guaranteed to outlive me, but for all the life and experience he would have while I was in the ground, he would never again see the world the way I did.

I tried to explain _Funky Bones_ to him. The way the bones became playthings. The way that death became life again, and I thought of how we were all going to die, but we owed it to Augustus, and maybe to ourselves, to live the hell out of the days we had left.

I reached for Issac's hand and he let me find it.


End file.
